The convergence that is steering our emerging future manifests itself through a number of scenarios that drive multiple paradigm shifts. As the shifts themselves converge, they intensify the critical need for leaders to think differently about a world where the future arrives faster than people think. Some time ago, I had a great conversation with Chunka Mui regarding pace, the sheer number of shifts, and the need to think differently. We used the autonomous vehicle to explore the challenges of our emerging future. I will present the full discussion in five short segments, along with white board animation to visualize our dialog.

Chunka Mui is the managing director of the Devil’s Advocate Group, a consulting team that helps organizations design and stress test their innovation strategies. As a consultant on strategy and innovation, Mr. Mui has spent considerable time analyzing the autonomous vehicle scenario. He asked a question in his book The New Killer Apps about autonomous vehicles and what happens if traffic accidents are reduced by 90% as Google predicts. This simple question makes visible the broad and deep implications of these future scenarios. As society responds to their implications, new ecosystems emerge that alter our world. In this case, the vehicle is one of numerous components of an emerging mobility ecosystem that is defined by the responses that are playing out right now.

My ongoing work on emerging future scenarios has driven a renewed focus on experience. Several factors are converging to shift the experience end game; specifically, the evolution of Ecosystems and the transformation of Interaction. These two forces – themselves the result of combinatorial innovation – are converging. While the way we interact continues to shift, a parallel evolution towards ecosystems is occurring. This ecosystem evolution introduces systemic complexity and combines with a shifting interaction paradigm to alter the way we think about experience.

Figure 1: the transformation of interaction and the evolution of ecosystems

In my previous post on the Transformation of Interaction, I mentioned the emergence of ecosystems and their likely impact on how we experience life. Together, the evolution of interaction and ecosystems plays a significant role in how we view experiences going forward. I referred to this in 2013 as the movement towards Next Generation Experiences. In the coming months, I will share a point of view that captures a finite set of future ecosystems. To position that discussion, it is helpful to look at how this evolution may ensue.

I invite you to rehearse along with me – enjoy this journey through the looking glass. Expand the window below to view via PowerPoint online.

When we look around us, we see a world in which digital is now woven into the fabric of our lives. Where convergence of paradigm shifts is now the new norm and the pace of change is accelerating exponentially. We are now living in a looking-glass world; where everything we think we know is being challenged, including our long-held notions of success and failure. At the same time it’s a world where we can imagine, create and enable like never before.

The road to future ecosystems is paved by stakeholder action in the coming decades. These ecosystems support life experiences and have no regard for industry boundaries. Over time, established peer-to-peer relationships lead to value creation and capture for all ecosystem participants. Along the way, value design gets complicated, as multi-stakeholder ecosystems introduce complexity. It is value design that I believe challenges traditional thinking, both in how we view relationships and how we share value. As traditional thinking gives way, the resulting ecosystems have the potential to move towards the collaborative commons described by Jeremy Rifkin.

According to Peter Diamandis of Singularity University, the most dramatic change in our global economy is about to occur between 2016 and 2020. He says that 3 to 5 billion new consumers, who have never purchased anything, never uploaded anything and never invented and sold anything, are about to come online and provide a mega-surge to the global economy. He calls this group the “Rising Billions.”

Technology giants like Google, Facebook, and SpaceX are all working to connect the world. Once connected, this exploding online community introduces new markets, creating a $30 trillion consumption opportunity by 2025 – and emerging markets will grow 75% more rapidly than developed markets. As discussed in a recent post on Changing Beliefs, this shift from developed to emerging markets requires a change in the approach used to win in these markets, as products and services from developed markets cannot simply be transplanted into emerging markets. But these rising billions are more than a market opportunity. They are a source of ideas, innovation, knowledge, skills, capacity, passion, learning, insight, and foresight.

I thought it would be interesting to get a slightly different perspective on the questions that I posed to Futurist Gerd Leonhard in our recent interview. So I reached out to IT Futurist Thornton May. Thornton and I have interacted on a number of occasions at various events. His bio describes him as a futurist, educator and author. His extensive experience researching and consulting on the role and behaviors of C-level executives in creating value with information technology has won him an unquestioned place on the short list of serious thinkers on this topic. Thornton moderates the nationally recognized CIO Solutions Gallery program, intended for executives and senior leaders in the technology and operations communities.

With that background, I was excited to explore these broad topics with Thornton. His perspective follows.